This application claims the entire benefit of Japanese Patent Application Number 2007-303449 filed on Nov. 22, 2007, the entirety of which is incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a vise assembly provided in a cutting machine such as a bench circular sawing machine in order to hold a workpiece in the cutting machine, and also to a cutting machine in which the vise assembly is used.
2. Description of Related Art
In a bench circular sawing machine as one example of a cutting machine, its main body including a rotary blade is attached to an arm provided upright on a rear portion of a base in such a manner that the main body is swingable upward and downward. By the downward swinging operation of the main body, the rotary blade is moved accordingly so as to cut a workpiece placed on the base. On the base is provided a guide fence extending laterally and having a guide surface vertical to a top face of the base so that a workpiece may be pressed against the guide surface, to facilitate positioning of the workpiece. The guide fence is provided with a vise assembly which includes a pressing part or jaw disposed protrusively frontward of the guide fence. The pressing part can be moved upward and downward and fixed at a desired height. With this pressing part, the vise assembly is configured to press from above and firmly hold a workpiece that has been abutted against the guide surface.
In a case where the workpiece to be cut is for crown moldings (decorative parts which are to be fitted to corners between a ceiling and an adjoining wall), however, the workpiece is rested in an unstably leaned position against the guide surface during the cutting process. Therefore, even if the workpiece is pressed against the guide surface by hand, the crown molding workpiece would become so shaky and unsettled that the workpiece disadvantageously could not be positioned adequately. In this case, the vise assembly is designed specifically for a workpiece having a rectangular cross section such as a board, a plank or a square bar, and is configured to vertically press and hold a top face of the workpiece down by means of a circular metal part or the like. Thus, if the vise assembly of this type could be used to hold a crown molding workpiece in a leaned position, proper positioning of the workpiece would not be achieved in a stable manner.
With this in view, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-263502 and Japanese Patent Publication 3925043 disclose a tilted or swingable fence that is angle-adjustably mounted to a guide fence. The tilted fence is disposed protrusively frontward from the guide surface of the guide fence in such a manner that the tilted fence can be fixed at any tilt angle so that a crown molding workpiece can be supported from its underside by a tilted surface of the fence in an appropriate position. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 6,481,320 B1 discloses an L-shaped holder capable of holding a crown molding workpiece in a leaned position with its upper and lower edges retained by rims of the holder. Thus, the holder with a crown molding workpiece held therein is pressed against the guide fence so as to make the workpiece positioned adequately.
However, the approaches proposed in the above-cited documents are not to introduce improvements in the existing vise assembly itself but to require either a substantial modification in the design of the guide fence so as to add the tilted or swingable fence or an extra part such as the holder to be provided in addition to the guide fence, and thus necessitate additional manufacturing costs and managerial tasks. Moreover, the tilted or swingable fence should be manipulated and pulled out from the guide surface before a crown molding workpiece is placed thereon, or crown molding workpieces should be attached to and detached from the holder one by one for each cutting process; in this way, handling of the additional tilted fence or holder may be considered to be burdensome and inconvenient.
It would thus be desirable to provide a vise assembly, and a cutting machine in which the vise assembly is used, by which a crown molding workpiece can be easily positioned and held stably in an adequate position without any significant modification on the existing part or provision of an additional part necessitated, with reduced costs and ease of operation.
The present invention has been made in an attempt to eliminate the above disadvantages, and illustrative, non-limiting embodiments of the present invention overcome the above disadvantages and other disadvantages not described above. Also, the present invention is not required to overcome the disadvantages described above, and an illustrative, non-limiting embodiment of the present invention may not overcome any of the problems described above.